The Uruk Expansion and Beyond: Archaeometric and Social Perspectives on Exchange in the IVth Millennium BCE

Abstract

This review of papers on the contribution of archaeometry to the understanding of the Uruk Expansion shows that there is very little evidence for the exchange of pottery among the widely scattered Uruk settlement enclaves of IVth millennium Mesopotamia or the similarly scattered settlements of the later Proto-Elamite expansion. The limited evidence of the transport of ceramics indicates that only a few examples of a few forms were carried to distant places. The widespread similarities of ceramics in the Uruk world and it successor seem more likely to have been created by itinerant potters than by the transport of pots. Likewise, the wide similarity of both Uruk and Proto-Elamite administrative technology such as numerical counters and tablets, seals, and sealings seems to be a result of itinerant officials, who with few exceptions recorded and sealed on local clays. Where we have some indication of what was administered, as at Godin and Yahya, it seems to be small scale and local production, rather than long-range exchange. However, some materials, most definitely bitumen, were moved in substantial amounts over hundreds of kilometers. However, we do not yet have any direct evidence of how such distant material transport was administered or regulated.